Narrow Aspirations
by Nyah
Summary: He'll never remember but they met, that first time, in the shadows.


Disclaimer: I did not write the comics or make the movie. I own nothing. I'm glad we cleared that up.

Note: For the LJ prompt, "masks"

**Narrow Aspirations**

When you're three years old you tell your mother you want to grow up to be a birthday cake. She laughs and kisses your forehead and your dad turns up the TV.

At seven, you'd like to be a doctor and by eight you admit that it's only because you know they have enough money for groceries and school shoes and even some extra for the ice cream truck with the thick glass windows that only comes out around midnight. Besides, if you were a doctor probably no one you knew would ever have to go to a hospital because they would have you.

By thirteen you want to be old enough to make more money than you do as a lookout under the bridge in the Narrows, the one the cops creep around to take working men and women unawares.

By sixteen, you are. You decide instead you'd like to be a switchblade.

At seventeen you think you'd like to be the porch light your sister leaves on just in case you come home before dawn.

By twenty-one you find your calling.

By twenty-three you've built a career on never getting caught.

But that's the year the whispers start and the streets close in and the Batman comes.

Cold comes early and hard that year and your outfit turns heads but not the suspicious sort. It's the first time you've ventured out before dark in head to heel leather and spandex, black as the shadows in an alley. But it's Halloween, after all, and a pair of kitten ears is excuse enough to get away with nearly anything. You're counting on it.

On the way home, you're wearing your new wealth on your wrist and ears when you hear the shots and the scuffling feet. Instinct sees you in the shadows, melting to safety like any denizen of Gotham to grow up this side of King St.

But considering the direction of the shots, the street corner in question, you know enough about what probably happened to slink closer. There's a woman huddled at the base of the vacant storefront at Thames and Linwood. You whistle sharply like you learned at thirteen and the woman weakly calls the all clear.

She's a working girl called Cherry and she's bleeding through her jeans. Underneath is the gouge and burn of a passing round. Otherwise, the street's deserted. The Bat, Cherry says it was, after Joey who pimps for her when he's not off answering to the king.

It's what the rumors have been kicking around. The dark isn't safe around here anymore, especially if you answer to Falcone. Thinks he's helping, Cherry says, helping the poor kids in the Narrows so they don't grow up to be just like her. You think about the Batman and how Cherry's just sixteen and think you might grow up to be a war.

You've got Cherry on her feet, arm around you're shoulder and you're talking about what's next. You think it better be Lou on 110th who sews up pit bulls but Cherry's had enough of mobster toughs tonight and she says Annie who lives above the Laundromat and hemmed your first communion dress.

It's then that the Batman comes back, dropping down out of the dark like an avenging angel.

You let Cherry fall to the pavement while your feet make to run. But anger has you frozen, cursing yourself, and the Batman, and Cherry for being just a kid who just wants to grow up to make it out alive. "You're right officer, I did steal them," you say in the tone you once wielded on street corners. You chose your mark with care; you know how well these diamonds catch the light.

"I'm not the police." His voice is a snarl but you know the way to show down a pit bull is never show fear.

"Guess you won't be asking any rude questions then." You don't change your tone but you're begging him to get it, begging him not to scare answers out of a kid who will dead by morning if she says a word.

"She needs to go to a hospital," he says, stepping further into the sodium glow of the streetlight.

You put up your hands to stop him and he's close enough now that you can pitch your voice low so it dies outside the light. "You make a better target than a taxi." And you don't know why you bother except that maybe you think he's implying he'll get her there. "They'll be back with more. I don't plan to be here."

You're gathering up Cherry again now. You weren't lying about the reinforcements. But the girl stumbles, her painted mouth going taut with fear.

The Batman catches her at arm and waist, easing her to rest her weight against you and off the bad hip. He looks at you with eyes blackened through the holes in that mask and nods once. "This your neighborhood?"

Deep down you know what he's asking but you're not ready to give an answer. You don't know if he's earned it anyway. "I grew up somewhere we know not to talk to cops. Or whatever you're supposed to be."

"A doctor should see that," he tries again like you're the one who isn't listening.

"Gunshots get reported," Cherry says. Her teeth are starting to chatter and you know he's about to insist.

You put a hand on his shoulder that has both of you backing away, skittish. "All her people have priors. No hospital."

He just nods again. "You know where you're going?"

Again with the double-edged questions, you think, annoyed. "I'm not the one on the wrong side of King St, rich boy." Vigilante he may be but he couldn't let a lady trip, not even if the lady was a whore.

He doesn't argue your point, just flicks his eyes to the solitaires in your earlobes. "You have good taste," he says and steps back into the shadows.

You wait a count of ten and then half-drag Cherry down Thames. You think about the Batman and wonder who he thinks he is, some rich boy, some pissed off cop, some ex-army psycho who can't get his rocks off without crushing some skulls. Some guy who's on Falcone's trail but came back to patch up a sixteen-year-old whore.

Just some guy in a mask, you think. Just that.

He could be anybody. So could you.


End file.
